Compare / Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker vs Phi-4
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker vs Phi-4
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker scores higher on the Small LM Index: 60.9 vs 44.7. On the 2 benchmarks both labs report, Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker wins 2 and Phi-4 wins 0. Both need about 11.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Only Phi-4 has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.070 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted.
Pick Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you work with long documents
- you need image input
Pick Phi-4 if…
- you want a hosted API rather than running it yourself
- you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)
Specifications
| Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker | Phi-4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 60.9 (likely 59–63) | 44.7 (likely 35–55) |
| Lab | ServiceNow (Apriel) · United States | Microsoft (Phi) · United States |
| Released | 2025-12-04 | 2024-12-12 |
| Parameters | 14.9B (dense) | 14.7B (dense) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~11.4 GB | ~11.4 GB |
| Context window | 262K tokens | 16K tokens |
| Input | text, image | text |
| Reasoning | Always thinks | No thinking |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | $0.070 ($0.056 in, $0.11 out) |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 1.2K | 327K |
Benchmarks
Higher is better. Bold marks the winner where both labs report a score. ≈ marks the index model's estimate for a score that wasn't reported, ✓ an independent measurement and * a score measured by another lab.
| Benchmark | Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | 79.0 | 70.4 |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 73.0 | 56.1 |
| Humanity's Last Exam Reasoning | 10.0 | ≈ 5 |
| AIME Math | 88.0 | ≈ 61 |
| Terminal-Bench Agentic | 14.0 | — |
| τ²-Bench Agentic | 64.6 | — |
| MMMU-Pro Vision | 60.3 | — |
| BFCL Agentic | 63.5 | — |
| AA-LCR Long context | 50.0 | — |
Scores are mostly reported by each lab with its own settings, so small gaps are noise. See the methodology. Open in the interactive comparison to add more models.
Questions
Which is better, Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker or Phi-4?
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker scores higher on the Small LM Index: 60.9 vs 44.7. On the 2 benchmarks both labs report, Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker wins 2 and Phi-4 wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Only Phi-4 has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.070 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted. Both need about 11.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker has the longer context window: 262K tokens against 16K.
Can I use Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker and Phi-4 commercially?
Both are released under the MIT license. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.